SpacemanSpiff85 December 20, 2014 at 12:24 am If we had any clue at all what was going on here, this might actually have been dramatic. Batiuk likes to throw in cheap drama without any of the buildup to make it meaningful.
Cheap drama and a Sunday victory lap. Dr. Chill’s presumably good news elicits from Funky the first non-ironic smiles we’ve seen from him in months. He whips out his phone again to re-read the doctor’s text (and for the benefit of those lucky Sunday-only readers). Here’s what brings joy to Westviewvians: the news that you’re not going to die…just yet. Batiuk wraps up this mini-non-drama with a Christmas bow in the form of an improbable, reverse engineered punchline.
Son of Stuck Funky 
“Wow, it’s freezing!”. “You’re right, this is a great song!”.
Is Funky just completely ignoring the person talking to him, or is he coming down with Dinkle Hearing Loss Syndrome and just heard “better” instead of “bitter” and made the rest up
Obviously the reader could relate to Funky more if they knew what health bullet he just dodged, but TheAuthor didn’t feel that things like logic, plot points and story fit into this particular arc, so he eliminated them in favor of airport gags. Great work, Tom. Remember to mention this novel approach to storytelling during the next big puff piece interview.
Good news for any of these folks is so rare (with the exception of the undeserving, loathsome Les Moore) that I don’t honestly mind if Funky basks in it for a bit. After all, the world is still aching to get him, a day or two’s delay won’t matter.
Batom® has taken the concept of “phoning it in” and raised it to a whole new level.
I knew that this was a big nothingburger, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that this amounted to absolutely nothing. He’ll be back in Montoni’s tomorrow exchanging Incredibly Lame Puns with St. Les the Righteous Smirker, Crazy Harry and Skunk Head Howard like nothing ever happened.
On behalf of all Lorain County residents with a smidgen of good artistic taste, I must be compelled to apologize. This shouldn’t even be marketed to a community newsletter, let alone actual daily newspapers.
What was the point of the week before, with like three days of buildup to “Funky hired Crankshaft” and then a couple days of “Crankshaft’s an asshole, surprising nobody”? Batiuk could’ve easily shown Funky worrying about his test results and his friends trying to reassure him. It would’ve been just about as funny as what actually happened. More so actually, since “kids with PTSD” wouldn’t have been a punchline.
It’s almost as if something isn’t quite… right… with Batom®. Usually he’s a crappy storyteller, but his writing skills (such as they are) have been showing signs of obvious deterioration.
I have a feeling that something happened, and the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram is embargoing it so they don’t upset their so-called “golden boy.”
You know, Batiuk, the “person mishears what someone says” gag only works when the misinterpretation sounds something like what the person said…
All you can do is groan “oh, BROTHER!” and roll your eyes.
Padding it out, padding it WAY out, so as to make that magical 50th anniversary.
That’s all this strip is, now, unless it’s to bathe Les Moore’s wondrous ego. In which case, I prefer the padding.
@beckoningchasm, I think the only way we could properly repay TB at this point is to find a way to get the strip canceled at the 49 1/2 year mark.
You know what, when you think about it this arc only would have made sense if you knew on Monday that Funky was on his way home from his important and potentially Christmas-ruining medical test. We had no idea where he was or what he was doing until he saw the message after landing, which is just a totally insane way to tell a story in a freaking comic strip.
I’d be willing to wager that this was originally the last week of a much longer arc, the premise of which was “Funky goes to Other City for vital medical tests, believes the results will doom him and forever ruin Christmas”. But he either a) chickened out or b) took mercy on his remaining readers and abandoned his newest pathetic sad-sack tale of woe for being too depressing even by his maudlin standards. It would also explain all that slapdash and slipshod Dinkle and Crankshaft rubbish too, which was obviously stuff he rescued from the shredder and pressed into service at the last second.
Thus we are possibly in the awkward position of owing TheAuthor a debt of gratitude for maybe sparing us two or three weeks of Funky in a hospital gown exchanging wry depressing banter with a terribly rude doctor. No, just kidding, I owe him nothing. But still.
Watch this. Doctor C Hill is an audiologist who tested Funkman for hearing loss. “Mr Winkerbean, you now have negative hearing.”
That’s also apparently a different email than he was reading yesterday. Yesterday it said “the result of your test was negative”. Now it’s “the results of your test were negative”. So maybe C. Hill got more test results in between today and yesterday, or there really is nobody who looks at this stuff before it’s printed.
“Remember to mention this novel approach to storytelling during the next big puff piece interview.”
Wait, maybe he’s going to fill in the time warp by running time backwards and making it all so confusing.
!ht05 sti hcaer dluow WF ,tuo derugif ti dah sklof emit eht yb dna aedi gnignellahc a eb dluow taht kniht I
See?
>>Watch this. Doctor C Hill is an audiologist who tested Funkman for hearing loss. “Mr Winkerbean, you now have negative hearing.”<<
If he has negative hearing, would that mean his ears are PRODUCING sound?
Sort of like the guy who puts so many fuel saving devices on his car that it starts producing gasoline?
I remember yesterday someone saying that Batiuk had come down with the same syndrome Lynn Johnston has. I think today’s strip has confirmed that. Batiuk clearly seems to understand what happened and assumes that since he does, so do we. This means that
a) no explanation will be forthcoming
and
b) there’s going to be a passive-aggressive strip condemning beefwit picky-faces who want the allegedly obvious spelled out to them.
Let’s just hope the gentleman next to The Funk Man does not share his hearing deficiency – “Wait, White WHAT?”
At this point I’m convinced the test was for syphilis, and the negative outcome is really being called into question.
What I get from this “arc” is that, a year ago, Batom™ finally noticed that smartphones exist.
Happy solstice, snarkers!
Not only has nothing happened – with this strip nothing has happened. Twice.
@Epicus Doomus: I have a feeling that you are correct, that this was a aborted storyline. Methinks that he just chickened out; after all, since when has he given a damn about his readers?
But by pulling the plug on a potentially terrible storyline of obscene levels of misery and woe for the Funk Man, the whole strip now comes off as a jumbled, incoherent mess. Why in the world he would have even ran any single strip from the supposedly aborted arc in in the first place is beyond me. It makes him look even more incompetent as a writer than what he already is regarded as.
Batom®, if this is somehow tied directly to the impending Christmas Eve death of Cory, you had a full year to rewrite that damn arc and remove any traces of this arc completely. Why didn’t you?
Battyboy himself checks into Comics Kingdom in a thin desguise of “RedRonin,” and hinted there was more to come from this arc.
More? More filler? Yeah, that’d be about right.
It’s the only way it even comes close to making sense. If the reader knows on Monday why Funky isn’t around and why he’s on edge, the dialog about Xmas being his favorite holiday and etc. suddenly fits, as does his happy reaction. And, as explained above, it explains the last few weeks of inexplicably horrible and weird filler garbage.
@Saturnino: “Wait, maybe he’s going to fill in the time warp by running time backwards and making it all so confusing.”
Wait until Batom® gets disappointed when he finds out that “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” already pioneered that method of storytelling.